Lost seeds, p.11
Lost Seeds, page 11
Damian said, “Yes, sir.” He saluted. “See? I’ve got my dog tags, sir. You hear the Viet Cong bombs falling all around us? You see that smoke filling the air? I need to return to my patrol in the jungle. I need to help the soldiers protect the children living there. It could catch on fire.”
Damian screamed, jumped up, and ran through the dimly lit bar. None of the patrons looked up or budged as Damian ran across the floor, shrieking and arms flailing.
“Fall down, the enemy is ready to attack. Run to the bunkers.”
Damian grabbed a bat from the storage room, held it like a rifle aimed toward the rats, and darted out the back door toward the garbage can, where something cracked his skull. He dropped to the ground in a daze. The bat fell and rolled away.
“Are you taking me back to the prison camp?” Damian asked, surrendering while Dub tied a rag across his eyes and bound his hands behind his back with rope. “The last time, you beat me every day. I’m ready to die this time.”
Waylon and Dub loaded Damian into the bed of the pickup and drove five miles out to Lake Luma, Dub’s favorite spot for hunting squirrels and rabbits in seclusion. As Dub piloted, the steering wheel loosened in his grip from sweaty palms. Neither Dub nor Waylon spoke the entire way.
Damian lay in the back in total surrender to his fate. Hands behind his back, he curled into a fetal position, resting his head against the metal floor of the truck bed. The truck jerked to a stop at the end of a long smooth asphalt road to make a slow turn onto a narrow-pitted dirt path leading to the lake.
Lying in the cargo bed, Damian’s head bumped viciously against the truck floor as it dipped into the potholes. “Sure. Break my head into pieces. I’m not scared of the Viet Cong anymore. The children are safe in foxholes with us soldiers.”
As Dub drove farther along the lake into a dense thicket of trees and brush, its black paint rendered the truck invisible from the road and anyone who might be fishing nearby. By the time they parked, the sun presented a mere sliver of itself above the horizon and the woods were darker than Dub desired, limiting the time they had to extract information from Damian. The lake glistened in the dim light. Dub turned off the truck and the only sounds that remained were crickets and birds.
“Shoot! I think I got a splinter from that wood stick when I cracked his head.” Dub wiped his palms on his pants.
Waylon glanced down at Dub’s hands, then gazed steadily out the passenger window. Dub nodded and they both exited the truck, leaving the doors open to avoid making too much noise. Dub walked guardedly along the truck’s side, scoping out the site.
Opening its back gate, Waylon looked at Damian. “Wow, I can’t believe this,” he said in a low whisper.
Sweat covered Damian’s body. A small trail of blood dripped from the cut on his head. Taking a deep breath, Dub grabbed Damian’s ankles, dragged him to the end of the tailgate, and then propped him upright with his legs dangling over the edge. Damian slumped with his shoulder leaning on the side of the truck bed.
Dub snarled into Damian’s ear, “Where is that little girl you spoke to in the Levee? What did you do to her?”
“Marine private, service number 1984567,” Damian said.
Dub repeated, “Where is the little girl and what did you do to her?”
“Marine private, service number 1984567.”
Dub jumped up into the cargo bed, snatched the blood-stained piece of wood, and slammed it into Damian’s back hard enough to knock him to the ground. The side of Damian’s head smashed into the dirt and struck small rocks embedded in the sand. With his hands still bound behind his back, his shoulder and knees absorbed the impact. Damian made no sound as something snapped, and a sharp pain exploded deep in the middle of his body. Every limb of his body gradually went numb, his breathing became labored, and his heartbeat slowed more and more.
Dub leaned in close. “Look, you, this is not war and you’re not overseas anymore. This is Saline in the good old United States of America. Every day this summer, you stared at a little girl walking by your daddy’s tavern and grunted at her. She’s missing and we know you did something to her. Tell us where she is now, or I’ll personally make sure you stop breathing.”
Damian repeated his service number.
Dub kicked Damian in the stomach. Darkness continued to fall, increasing the ominous presence of the lake. Dub loosened the rope around Damian’s hands, then nodded toward the truck. He and Waylon walked up front and climbed inside, quietly closing their doors. Damian lay silent and motionless on the ground, still breathing and sweating heavily.
Dub said, “We’re getting nowhere with this guy. Let’s leave. We can’t take him back in this condition. At this rate, I want to kill the man.” He started the truck, yet his hands froze, refusing to grab the controls. Glancing into the rearview mirror, he said, “As it stands now, he doesn’t know who brought him here to the lake. Let’s leave him. Let him find his way out. If necessary, I’ll track him down again tomorrow.”
He grabbed the steering wheel with his left hand and put the truck into drive with the right. “If Damian has her, he couldn’t have taken her far.”
“I can’t believe this is all happening, Dub!”
With the lights out, Dub turned the truck around, avoiding Damian. Seeing only the outline of a body, Dub drove cautiously around the man and back down the faint path lit only by the water’s glow. Back on the dirt road, Dub sped up to beat the darkness. The truck leaped onto the asphalt highway, he snapped on the headlights and pressed the gas pedal down, accelerating to the fastest speed allowed on the way back to Saline. Along the way, Waylon rolled down the truck window and threw the blood-stained wood plank into the brush.
In Saline, Dub and Waylon passed cars filled with neighbors, two to a car, looking up and down the streets. People walked between buildings, looking in trash bins and under bushes. People canvassed all over downtown and the Grove, putting up handwritten signs on lampposts and utility poles reading:
LOST: 5-year-old Negro girl Rosie Thompson, wearing orange swimming suit with green flowers.
Dub drove straight to Waylon’s neighborhood, where cars were lined up and down the street. Tears rolled down Waylon’s face. “What is this doing to us?” he asked.
The only light at Lake Luma came from the moon’s reflection on the water. Damian struggled to open his blindfolded eyes to see the dancing surface of the lake through the slit where the rag had slipped down on the right side.
“I can’t move.” Damian pushed air from his throat. He breathed in. “Soldier, jump into the foxhole to save the children.”
A car approached. Then more arrived. He heard voices.
“Our troops.” Damian’s breathing became quick and shallow. “English?” Damian tried to move his arm. “I’m here,” he whispered.
Branches and leaves rustled. The earth pounded as if millions of feet approached, along with the fragrance of burning oil. Then the movement stopped.
Are you friend or foe? Is the soldier with you? He believed his voice to be heard, but it was all in his mind.
Damian lay vulnerable and beaten amid the darkened woods near Lake Luma. The nightfall enveloped him in the same spot where he had fallen out of Dub’s truck. He made no attempt to free his hands from the loosened ropes. No struggle to escape the rocks, sand, and leaves that scratched his skin. Behind closed lids his eyeballs rolled back and forth, frantically searching for existence or connection to the world, ultimately abandoning the search. His breathing became shallow and erratic, then ceased.
Chapter 26
Not Every Loss Is a Loss
July 12, 1965
Commotion above. Footsteps echoed on the hardwood floors of the house. Loretta’s crying traveled through the heating vents. And the low drone of Mae’s voice, trying to console everyone, permeated into the crawl space. As Jason looked at the toy soldiers lined up on the dirt, the sounds reverberated like mortars exploding in the sky. Each heavy step became a bomb going off. Each anguished voice rattled the wood. Dub and Waylon’s discussion about Damian wafted through the apertures where the front porch met the crawl space.
“Why did Mom want us away from that man?” Jason said to the fighters as he arranged them in the soil. “He isn’t the only person that wanted something to happen to Rosie. We know how to eliminate Rosie now, don’t we? Even the man at the swimming pool with the sign said Rosie is no good. Why is everyone crying for her?”
Jason put his shovel in the ground and moved back the earth to retrieve the buried cigar box filled with papers, Kate’s smoking apparatus, more miniature plastic soldiers, and small toys stolen during shopping trips. Taking out more warriors, he arranged them to encircle the prisoner covered with a blanket.
The young boy played cross-legged on the cold dirt floor, commanding the troops. The fortress drew a nod of approval and a smile. “Men, we must check the plan.”
He reached into the cigar box and stroked the biggest treasure: Tim’s papers, now joined by Jason’s own—sheets folded into squares, expressing Jason’s affection for Dr. Tucker, disdain for Rosie, and desire to deal with her.
As he listened to the explosives go off above his head, and the crying and turmoil, Jason knelt quietly, guarding the hole he’d dug in the crawl space, and slowly read, again, each of Tim’s notes and studied the drawings of the baby.
Chapter 27
Killing the Dead
July 12, 1965
The Lodge men gathered at Lake Luma on a ninety-degree evening. The moon reflected off the water, creating another source of light in addition to the glow of the lanterns the men pulled from their vehicles and lit as they donned their robes. Jaffee arrived in civilian clothes. A disheveled man parked his muddied truck next to Jaffee’s.
“I’m telling you, ain’t nothing like a little girl,” the man said from under the white robe and pointed hat with holes cut out for his eyes. “I can’t stop thinking about that little colored girl taking lessons down at the pool. I can put that swimming suit and lipstick on her and bring her to the Lodge for you too.”
The other men gathered around him had similar robes, and they laughed, nodding their coned headpieces in agreement.
One man said, “I could eat a little chocolate cookie, and then go home and drink some white milk!” The others howled with drunken laughter.
The robe draped across the dirty man’s belly shook as he laughed wildly, wearing shoes caked in mud and manure from the pig farm he worked during the day. The odor of swine penetrated his skin, mixed with the stench of the eight bottles of beer he had consumed over the past two hours. The empties, thrown into the bed of the pickup, sat among other unopened cases.
“The word going around is them people think she’s missing, and what if . . . what if I have information,” the man said in a bragging tone. “They were driving all over and boo-hooing when I stopped to fill up at the gas station on Main Street. I warned them to back off with my sign. I pulled it out of the bed and waved it around in the air, I did.”
Sweat oozed from the man’s armpits and face through the cotton robe.
Jaffee heard the talkative man’s words. “Dammit, that is Willie Post,” he said to himself. “I guess I should go over and see what I can find out.” He put on his robe.
Just as Jaffee got close enough to decipher Willie’s musings, another robed member, Vernon, said loudly, “What the hell is this? Fellas, come over here, I think we got a goddamn play toy. We can have some fun tonight. This is a live one . . . or a dead one.”
The men ran over to the bushes, gazing down at Damian’s lifeless body. Dried blood on his head made a line from his crown, down the rag over his eyes, and landed on his cheek. He was lying in a fetal position where he had fallen from the truck, flat on his side with his hands tied loosely behind his back. A swollen mound bulged under his shirt where the wood plank had struck his spine.
“I think I just accidentally peed on his head while relieving myself,” Vernon said as he raised his arms. His robe and hood bore decorative patches indicating his high rank in the organization.
Vernon bent down to secure a closer look at the mangled body. Another man lowered his torch toward Damian’s face.
Both men said at the same time, “It’s blood!”
“Is he dead?” someone said from the back of the crowd.
“Who is he? How did he get here?” another asked.
“Who gives a damn. It’s a dead colored,” Vernon said. He kicked Damian with great force, breaking Damian’s ribs, then pushed him with the toe of his boot. The body flipped onto its back and showed no signs of breathing or cringing. Vernon spun around anxiously in a circle. “Take the torches and make sure we are alone.”
Several men looked around in the bushes. The flames illuminated the dense woods and scorched brush and leaves as they searched for other life or a perpetrator.
“Hey, Willie. Is this another darkie you made disappear?”
Vernon and Willie laughed together.
“Maybe so, Vernon, maybe no. I’ll never say. But I’m game for some fun. If he’s dead, what the heck.”
The men gathered around Damian’s body. The darkness hid the tire tracks from Dub’s vehicle and Waylon and Dub’s footprints in the dirt.
Jaffee stood at the back in silence, then discreetly retreated to his ride. He opened the door, leaned in to put the vehicle in neutral, and pushed it far down the dirt road, out of sight of the group. Without turning on the headlights, he jumped inside, started the vehicle, and drove away.
“Fellas, a good old-fashioned lynching is in order. He’s dead, so no crime committed. As a part of the initiation, Jeb, our pledge, must pass the hanging test,” said Vernon.
A wiry, baby-faced young man weaved his way through the crowd. Jeb had just returned from Vietnam and still sported a soldier’s crew cut. His father beamed with pride under a hood that exposed only his eyes and mouth.
Willie said, “Let me grab some hemp rope and a ladder. A nice, thick, long line is in my cargo. It can take a little torching and still do the job.”
Sweat engulfed Willie like a downpour.
Without removing Dub’s cords and rags from the body, Jeb hoisted Damian over his shoulder like a wounded soldier, carried him to the tree, and placed him in a seated position against the trunk. Willie returned from his truck with the binding and ladder. Jeb tied a hangman’s noose.
“Hey, this boy’s a marine. I can tell from his dog tags. I fought with some colored marines. They had my back too,” Jeb said, looking at his father hesitantly.
“Too bad. You backing out?” Vernon said.
The father said boldly, “Where’s your allegiance, son? Now you’re home. It’s the Lodge.”
“Maybe this fella and I were in Nam together.”
“If you aren’t with us, then move the hell out of the way. No initiation,” Vernon said, stepping toward Jeb and puffing out his chest.
“No, no,” Jeb said. “He’s dead anyway, so no skin off my back.”
Jeb tugged the line of hemp around Damian’s neck. Damian’s head bobbed downward, his elbows protruded like wings from his bound wrists, and his legs extended straight out with the feet angled outward like a ballerina. Jeb walked around the tree, inspecting the strong and thick lower branches. He set up the ladder and took the other end of the rope, draped it over a limb and started pulling. As Damian’s body fell to the ground, Jeb continued to pull until it lifted higher and higher. His feet finally dangled above the ground, and the crowd of robed men cheered as the corpse ascended into the air, legs and head swinging ever so slightly. Once Damian hung six feet from the ground, Jeb wrapped the loose end of the cord around the trunk three times, then found a fat branch and knotted the middle portion of the noose.
“This is the way to attach a rope to a wooden tree swing,” Jeb said, standing back in pride as the robes crowded around, congratulating him.
“Let it rip.” Vernon handed Jeb a torch and a can of liquid.
Jeb opened the can, threw the liquid kerosene on Damian’s body, and tilted the torch close to the corpse. Damian exploded into flames, consuming the ties and the blindfold. Damian felt no pain. The hooded men stood in silence as his features melted and his singed clothes became indistinguishable from his skin. The Lodge members clapped and jeered. Torches bobbed toward the moon, becoming stars in the darkness.
Vernon handed Jeb brand-new robes to commemorate his induction and successful initiation. The Lodge members continued the ceremony, and by its end, all traces of Dub and Waylon being at Lake Luma were indistinguishable from the vehicle treads and footprints belonging to the Lodge.
As soon as Jaffee got home, he called Bill.
When the phone rang shortly after he’d gone to bed, Bill groaned. “This can’t be anything good.”
“Bill, I’m not going to tell you a whole lot because I know nothing. You with me?”
“Yes, but make it quick. I’m sleeping.”
“The little colored girl, Bill. Willie Post is a suspect. He protested at the pool and saw her. He said some perverted things that make me think he did something. He talked about making her disappear and some other stuff and talked about bringing her to the Lodge. If he did something, he can’t bring that mess to the Lodge.”
“That’s enough. Listen, not being at the lake, I’m not privy. Now you do what you think you need to do as a cop, but I’m not obligated to witness anything to anybody. What you’re telling me is hearsay. I’m not losing my job over Willie and his nonsense. Most likely, Willie bullshitted you all. Anything else?”
“Well, there is . . . ah . . . no.” Jaffee hung up. “I must clear myself of this,” he said to the telephone. Jaffee tiptoed down the hallway to his bedroom, and in the glow of the streetlamp through a window, he found stationary in his wife’s vanity, then proceeded to the family room, where he sat at the children’s homework desk to compose a message. The shakiness of his hands had diminished by the time he was done.
